In the west, across the wracked Atlantic, a sickness rises like steam from a slaughterhouse, and I, an insignificant man from a small green country, watches as a giant stumbles, piss-drunk on its own lies.
I know corruption, indeed, all nations have kissed that serpent. But what festers now in the White House isn’t scandal, nor politics, nor left versus right. It is rot. Old‑testament rot. Rot that blackens whatever it touches.
And I’ll say it plain, in the way we would in the Valleys: “if Jeffrey bloody Epstein looked at you and saw a man lower than himself, then your soul is already fuckin’ landfill.”
America once boasted of moral character, as if character were something you could carry in a breast pocket and shine up every so often when needed.
I remember the hush before MLK spoke, the way your cities hummed like expectant orchestras. And I remember Elvis and the blues spilling from roadside speakers, from back-street bars and dimly-lit juke joints that still remembered where their sorrow came from. There was grit in your music and truth in every chord. Even in your noise, there was meaning, a kind of prayer set to rhythm and rust.
And we, across the sea, heard it; the words, always, but also, the ache behind them. That ache made us believe you remembered ‘feel’. It was as if you were a secret too beautiful to keep. There was promise in you, wild hope inked in defiance. You wore your contradictions openly, but still, you reached for stars. And we, across the sea, watched as your better angels wrestled dark forces whether or not we saw them as dark as you did.
I never ever wondered if a single person could strut in, swagger, and snap the whole thing like a cheap necklace. If a whole party could be mugged in broad daylight without even the need for seduction. If ‘faith’ could be wrapped around a fist, and truth beaten senseless on the steps of the White House. And the faithful cheer.
Christians, supposedly.
Men who once brayed about protecting children now circle their golden calf: a man who winked at predators, boasted of trespassing women’s bodies, and lounged arm‑in‑arm with the filth of the age.
Tell me, good old “Yoo Ess of Ay” has your God gone walkabout? Or did you trade Him for a red cap and a lie big enough to swallow your shame? I read some of the ‘Epstein messages’. Enough shadows to form a gallows but no single smoking gun. I see only a field of them, rusted, spent, surrounding two names like a never-ending murder scene.
And the man entrusted with your nuclear codes now calls it a hoax. Of course he does.The guilty always howl “witch hunt”when the noose becomes familiar with their necks.
So the secrets may blaze like stolen fire, even though there’s no forge, no flame worth honour’s name. Just rot rebranded into smoke, while coal below remembers shame. Lies leak like sewage into riverwater, and the country’s dignity is dragged behind like a broken mule.
And still loyalists kneel, not from devotion, but from fear that truth, once unleashed, will torch their whole temple. Press conferences present sanctified script, with a preacher’s sneer. Babel is built from circuit boards by a glass-eyed chorus of hollow men, tech-lords and smooth-palmed shepherds who whisper freedom while fencing in the flock. They know what silence buys. They know what sunlight kills.
Yes, even here, a prince was cast out like diseased linen, stripped clean by a King who finally remembered duty. If monarchy can do what democracy won’t, what does that say about your republic? And here’s what sears a Welsh heart most: not the corruption itself, Celts know the world is no gentle teacher, but the shrug. The million‑strong shrug. There was a nation once that stormed beaches for freedom, yet now defends those who wouldn’t cross their conscience if you drove them to it in a golf cart. A country where pedophilia is negotiable but loyalty to a cult is not; that is a land losing its soul faster than empires fall in history books.
What has been stolen cannot be handed back by vote count. The myth that America was decent is exposed. The varnish from the republic has been stripped and the worm‑eaten timber underneath exposed
Cruelty has been turned into patriotism, lies into liturgy, and power into proof of innocence. And a third of the nation calls it strength.Here, we have a word for that:
‘cywilydd’ –
shame so deep it dampens the air. I speak these words not as foe, but as a man raised on your giants, the righteous fire of Baldwin, the thunder-fists of Ali, Rosa’s unshakable spine, Maya’s truths wrapped in velvet flame, from Billie to Nina, and so many others who sang of the strangest of fruit. Obama’s tempered voice, hope forged into eloquence. I carry their words in my marrow, their courage and grit in my jaw. So, I do not rage for hatred’s sake. I rage because I believed you. Because they made me believe you. But I’m just an insignificant Afro-German Welshman, a poet with mud on his boots, speech roughened by rain, rugby and song.
Still, I know this much: any country that forgets its children forfeits the right to call itself good.
If America wants redemption, it must drag every name, every billionaire, every senator, every mogul into the harsh light of truth. No more redactions, no more euphemisms, no more comfortable cages for monsters.
Call it justice. Call it cleansing. Call it finally a return to a moral spine. Because evil thrives on silence, but it dies screaming when ordinary people refuse to bow.
And if the great republic across the sea wants to be great again, truly great, it must stop worshipping its villains and start protecting its children. Until then, from this wet little nation, I offer you a warning carved in coal and rain: A country that excuses predators is a country already half‑buried.
So dig now, while the coal still remembers heat because rot, left alone, will become the weather of a dying land.
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THE BACON FLAG BRIGADE
They cry, “My bacon’s under threat,
The woke will steal my pint, I bet!”
They rage at sourdough, almond milk,
As if soft bread were woven silk.
They claim a flag is under siege,
Yet spray it up with racist screed.
They shout of patriots in chains—
But none were jailed for harmless claims.
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It isn’t beer that makes the cost,
It’s landlords bled, and pubs all lost.
Not “woke,” but greed that drains the till,
While breweries cash the housing kill.
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It isn’t pride that’s criminal,
But riots stoked by lies so small.
And still they bleat of culture wars,
As services collapse indoors.
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For none of this explains the blight:
Why homes are priced beyond our sight;
Why wages shrink, why bills ascend,
Why broken roads refuse to mend.
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No woke-left phantom’s to be blamed,
But five decades of rules the same:
Of cuts, of greed, of ruthless laws,
Of gilded halls that guard the cause.
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So keep your pint, your toast, your cheese,
Your Union Jack that flaps with ease.
But know, while flags are waved in jest,
Your children’s future is repossessed.
The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 